Chris Stein’s memoir paints a vivid picture of his time with Blondie

Stein’s ‘Under a Rock’ provides a fascinating look at the downtown Manhattan scene of the mid-1970s and how Blondie rose to stardom from those humble beginnings, crashed and burned and then rose again.

CHRIS STEIN
UNDER A ROCK
St. Martin’s Press (Hardcover)

By John Curley

Chris Stein’s Under a Rock is written in a conversational style and paints a vivid picture of Stein’s life before, during and after his first tenure in Blondie as well as the second chapter of his life that included Blondie’s reunion, his marriage and becoming a father. Debbie Harry wrote the book’s Foreword. In a short piece near the front of the book that follows Harry’s Foreword and is titled “The Cup: A Downtown Memory,” Stein’s friend Romy Ashby writes: “[Stein’s] memory is like a vast catacomb of wonderful stuff where he can go and wander around anytime he wants.”

The reader does not need to live in the New York City metro area to fully appreciate Under a Rock, but those that do will probably get more out of it. Stein’s detailed descriptions of his 1950s childhood in Brooklyn are fascinating, and he includes quite a few pop-culture references to make it relatable. His habit of collecting ephemera on the street and bringing it home began in his childhood, since Brooklyn NBC Studios was near his school. He would go through their trash and bring home items such as discarded cue cards and colored lighting gels. (Stein writes with fondness of the time that he and his childhood friends met Sammy Davis Jr. outside Brooklyn NBC Studios.) Stein’s longtime interest in collecting knives also began in childhood, when his father bought him a British commando dagger at a military surplus store on Manhattan’s 42nd Street. Stein would also take speakers from discarded TV sets he found on the street and hook the speakers up to his turntable. He jokingly refers to doing that as “poverty hi-fi.”

Stein got his first guitar and amp at age 12. He played his first gig in a Brooklyn church basement around 1965 and music became a bigger part of his life from that point on. An early band of his opened a 1967 Manhattan show by the Velvet Underground. The death of Stein’s father in the summer after his freshman year of high school affected him greatly.

Stein’s writing about his drug use and the sketchy characters that were involved in the procurement of drugs in Brooklyn and Manhattan from the 1960s to the 1990s is quite expressive. Stein writes that Tony Sirico, who would go on to play Paulie Walnuts in The Sopranos decades later, was supposed to sell pot to Stein but instead took Stein’s money, punched him on the chin and took off. Because Stein’s writing is so conversational, the detailed descriptions of his drug use over the years are very matter of fact.

Famous friends and acquaintances mentioned in the book include Andy Warhol, William Burroughs, Fab 5 Freddy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Robert Fripp, Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson. And Stein gives credit to the longtime New York City disc jockey Frankie Crocker of WBLS-FM for helping to drive “Rapture” up the charts by giving the song a great deal of airplay.

Stein and Harry meeting for the first time in September 1973 when he attended a performance by Harry’s band at the time, The Stilettos, takes place in Chapter 5. Stein would soon join the band and begin a relationship with Harry. They are still close friends. Stein writes that he considers Harry to be a member of his immediate family along with his wife and daughters. Stein chronicles the domestic situation between he and Harry as well as the danger that the streets of Lower Manhattan sometimes posed in the mid-1970s. The most awful memory from that time period that Stein shares is a home-invasion robbery in which he and Harry were tied up in separate rooms and Harry was raped by the intruder. Regarding the intruder, Stein writes: “All these years later and I still want to kill this person.”

The majority of the book concerns Blondie’s rise from Manhattan’s downtown scene to international stardom. Bands of the downtown scene such as New York Dolls, Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and The Dictators are discussed. The first era of Blondie included several notable personnel changes in the band, a fallout with their manager of whom Stein was not fond, many tours, a considerable amount of drug use and several big-selling albums that began with 1978’s Parallel Lines, their third album. As the band’s star rose, Stein insulated himself from the pressures related to the band’s notoriety by smoking a lot of pot.

The parts of the book that chronicle the era of the albums Parallel Lines, Eat to the Beat and Autoamerican and everything that happened with Blondie during those years will probably be of the biggest interest to most fans. The great success of those times is quite a contrast to where Stein and Harry ended up just a few years later following the breakup of the band after the tour for The Hunter album. Stein paints a stark picture of his and Harry’s increasing drug issues and money problems that followed the band’s dissolution, which includes having to move out of the East 72nd Street townhouse that had five floors and an elevator in which they lived during the height of their fame. Harry stood by Stein as he went through treatments for sores on his body that were diagnosed as pemphigus vulgaris. They ended their relationship after going through treatments for their addictions.

Their professional relationship continued as did their friendship. They performed solo shows together. Stein wrote the theme song for Warhol’s mid-1980s MTV show. Stein was prescribed methadone for his heroin addiction but continued to use cocaine and smoke crack.

Blondie’s reunion in the late 1990s turned around Stein and Harry’s fortunes. Stein got married and stopped his drug use apart from the methadone. The band picked up a new generation of fans after reuniting. And Stein found that he didn’t mind touring as much as he did during his younger days. He’s a movie buff and enjoyed being able to watch movies on the band’s comfortable tour bus as it headed to the next destination.

Stein and his wife Barbara were living about a mile from the World Trade Center at the time of the September 11th terror attacks, and his descriptions of that day are quite vivid.

Stein’s writing about his two daughters reveals his fatherly pride in them. And some of that is genuinely sweet, such as his description of watching Sesame Street and other kids’ TV with his elder daughter Akira when she was a toddler.

Since CBGB’s was such a big part of Blondie’s history, Stein’s description of the closing of the club is very sad. And he makes it quite clear that he is not happy about the gentrification of Manhattan and how it has priced young artists out of the area. In addition, Stein doesn’t mince his words when writing of his disgust of the current political situation in America, stating: “I can’t say enough about how badly the current political climate f—king sucks, ridiculous culture wars distracting from any semblance of actual debate.”

In the Epilogue at the end of the book, Stein writes with great sorrow about the death of Akira last year at age 19 from an accidental overdose. He goes on to write about his guilt that his discussions with his daughters about his past drug use may have been misconstrued. Those passages are a difficult read since it’s clear how much Stein’s family means to him. I’m sure that I’m not the only reader to get teary eyed at that part.

Trying to make sense of Blondie’s place in history, Stein opines: “I remember that back then, Debbie and I never felt we’d quite succeeded, that we’d only attained some cult status; it’s only now in the rearview mirror that people consider Blondie as part of some grand showbiz hierarchy.”

Under a Rock is a must read for Blondie fans. And it is a fascinating read because it provides a pop culture history of music and New York City from the 1950s to the present that is told in Stein’s engaging conversational writing style.